This week started with a promising recovery in the cryptocurrency market following the $19 billion market crash earlier this month, as demand for digital assets began to surge and a potential end to the tariff wars appeared on the horizon.
Cryptocurrency investors’ attention was largely focused on US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at securing a trade deal to avoid fresh import tariffs.
However, the positive momentum changed sharply on Wednesday when Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw an outflow of $470 million despite the US Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
Raising investor concerns, Thursday’s tariff meeting between the two presidents ended with no significant announcements related to import tariffs, creating greater uncertainty in global and digital asset markets.
Saylor claims that Bitcoin could rise to $150,000 by the end of 2025
Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, the largest Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company in terms of holdings, predicts that Bitcoin will reach $150,000 by the end of 2025.
“I think these 12 months were probably the best 12 months in the history of the industry,” Saylor he said CNBC at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas on Monday.
Saylor cited the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopting tokenized securities, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent supporting stablecoins to protect dollar dominance, and a general shift in U.S. regulatory rules as reasons to remain bullish. He said:
“We currently expect it to be around $150,000 by the end of the year and this is the consensus of stock analysts covering our company and the Bitcoin industry.”
The forecast comes amid depressed prices for crypto assets following a market crash that was sparked by US President Donald Trump, who announced 100% additional tariffs on China, sparking investor concerns about macroeconomic instability.
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Standard Chartered sees $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by 2028, equivalent to stablecoins
According to investment bank Standard Chartered, tokenized real assets (RWA) could reach a cumulative value of $2 trillion over the next three years as more global capital and payments migrate to competent blockchain rails.
In a report shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday, the bank said the “trustless” structure of decentralized finance (DeFi) could challenge the dominance of time-honored financial systems (TradFi) controlled by centralized entities.
The growing employ of DeFi in payments and investments could push the market capitalization of non-Stablecoin RWAs to $2 trillion by 2028, an investment bank predicts.
Of this $2 trillion, it was projected that $750 billion would flow into money market funds, another $750 billion into tokenized U.S. equities, $250 billion into tokenized U.S. funds, and another $250 billion into “less liquid” segments of private equity, including commodities, corporate debt and tokenized real estate.
“Stablecoin liquidity and DeFi banking are important prerequisites for the rapid development of tokenized RWAs,” said Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, who added:
“We expect risk-weighted assets to grow exponentially in the coming years.”
According to estimates, reaching a market capitalization of $2 trillion would mean a more than 57-fold escalate in the value of risk-weighted assets over the next three years compared to their current cumulative value of $35 billion. data from RWA.xyz.
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“No BlackRock, no party” for Bitcoin, altcoin ETF investing: K33 Research
The long-awaited approval of altcoin ETFs may not deliver the massive inflows investors expect without the participation of asset management giant BlackRock, according to market data.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF received $28.1 billion in investment in 2025, the only fund with positive year-to-date inflows, bringing total cash Bitcoin ETF inflows to a cumulative $26.9 billion.
Without BlackRock, spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen cumulative net outflows of $1.27 billion year-to-date, According to to K33 research chief Vetle Lunde.
Inflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs were the main driver of Bitcoin price momentum in 2025, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital asset research Geoff Kendrick recently told Cointelegraph.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm, with $13.5 trillion in assets under management as of the third quarter 2025.
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Solana ETFs Could Attract $6 Billion in First Year as SOL Joins the ‘Substantial League’
Investors are closely watching the launch of Solana’s first staking ETF, which is expected to bring billions of dollars to Solana and the broader altcoin market.
According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, at least three altcoin ETFs were expected to launch later Tuesday: Bitwise’s Solana ETF (SOL) and Canary’s Litecoin ETF (LTC) and Hedera (HBAR).
The SEC’s approval of the first Solana staking ETF was a “transformational” milestone that could attract an additional $3-6 billion of fresh capital to the altcoin within the first year, according to Bitget exchange chief analyst Ryan Lee.
“Solana now has the potential to attract $3 billion to $6 billion in the first year.”
The fresh ETF staking feature provides holders with an additional 5% of passive income, which could inject more institutional capital into the broader altcoin sector beyond just ETFs, the analyst added.
Staking means locking tokens on a proof-of-stake blockchain network for a predetermined period of time in order to secure the network and earn passive income in return.
Recent cryptocurrency ETFs could push underlying altcoins to all-time highs. In the case of Bitcoin, ETFs accounted for about 75% of fresh investments when Bitcoin reclaimed the $50,000 mark on February 15, less than a month after spot BTC ETFs debuted on January 11.
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The DYdX community will vote on the $462,000 disaster payout proposal
Decentralized exchange dYdX has published a post-mortem and community update detailing compensation plans for traders affected by the on-chain halt, which halted operations for about eight hours during last month’s market crash.
Exchange he said on Monday, the management community will vote on compensating affected traders with up to $462,000 from the protocol’s insurance fund.
DYdX wrote that the October 10 outage was “due to misordering of the encoding process and was extended in duration due to delays in Oracle sidecar service validators restarting.” According to DEX, when the network resumed, “the matching engine processed trades/liquidations at incorrect prices due to outdated Oracle data.”
DYdX said there was no loss of user funds on-chain, but some investors suffered liquidation losses during the shutdown.
The dYdX management community will vote to decide whether affected traders should be compensated with funds from the protocol’s insurance fund.
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DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.
The Plasma token (XPL) is down more than 18%, marking the biggest drop in the top 100 this week, followed by DoubleZero (2Z), which is down more than 17% over the past week.
Thank you for reading our roundup of the most significant events in DeFi this week. Join us this Friday for more stories, insights and education about this lively space.
